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Legal Systems Very Different From Ours with David Friedman

Today’s guest is David Friedman of Santa Clara University. Our discussion centers around his upcoming book, Legal Systems Very Different From Ours, which you can read in draft form at his website.

David became interested in this topic when he became interested in the decentralized legal system of saga-period Iceland. This interest has since expanded into a full book covering everything from Imperial Chinese Law to the customary legal system of Somaliland in northern Somalia. We discuss some of these chapters, with a focus on Somalian, Jewish, Icelandic, and 18th-century British law. We also discuss some of the major themes of the book, such as feud law and embedded or polylegal systems.

Related links:

I. M. Lewis’ book on the modern history of Somalia

The Invisible Hook by Peter Leeson (He contributed a chapter on pirate law to Legal Systems Very Different From Ours). He was also a recent guest of this show.

Download this episode.

Scott Alexander recently reviewed this book and wrote a follow-up on specific interesting passages.

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The post Legal Systems Very Different From Ours with David Friedman appeared first on The Economics Detective.

Unintended Consequences and Systemically Important Real Sectors with Frank Milne

My guest today is Frank Milne of Queen’s University.

Our topic for today will be unintended consequences. Frank has written a paper directed at policymakers to help them understand some of the pitfalls that economists have identified. The paper is directed at Australian policymakers, so some of the examples are Australia specific, though they generalize quite well to other countries.

We start where the paper starts, with a discussion of Australia’s heavy investment in commodity exports to China in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Many people mistook the temporary increase in demand for Australian mineral exports for a permanent change, leading them to over-invest in developing the Australian mining industry.

We go on to discuss many topics, with a particular focus on housing. We also touch on Frank’s work on Systemically Important Real Sectors (SIRS), which he is working on with co-author John F. Crean. SIRS are sectors with the potential to cause systemic problems in the banking sector. They feature high volatility of costs and revenues, which create the potential for large losses to lenders.

Related links:

The Diamond-Dybvig model (Wikipedia) and the original paper.

The Arrow-Debreu model (Wikipedia).

House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again by Mian and Sufi.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to Economics Detective Radio on iTunes, Android, or Stitcher.

The post Unintended Consequences and Systemically Important Real Sectors with Frank Milne appeared first on The Economics Detective.

Unintended Consequences and Systemically Important Real Sectors with Frank Milne

My guest today is Frank Milne of Queen’s University.

Our topic for today will be unintended consequences. Frank has written a paper directed at policymakers to help them understand some of the pitfalls that economists have identified. The paper is directed at Australian policymakers, so some of the examples are Australia specific, though they generalize quite well to other countries.

We start where the paper starts, with a discussion of Australia’s heavy investment in commodity exports to China in the wake of the 2008 crisis. Many people mistook the temporary increase in demand for Australian mineral exports for a permanent change, leading them to over-invest in developing the Australian mining industry.

We go on to discuss many topics, with a particular focus on housing. We also touch on Frank’s work on Systemically Important Real Sectors (SIRS), which he is working on with co-author John F. Crean. SIRS are sectors with the potential to cause systemic problems in the banking sector. They feature high volatility of costs and revenues, which create the potential for large losses to lenders.

Related links:

The Diamond-Dybvig model (Wikipedia) and the original paper.

The Arrow-Debreu model (Wikipedia).

House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession, and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again by Mian and Sufi.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to Economics Detective Radio on iTunes, Android, or Stitcher.

The post Unintended Consequences and Systemically Important Real Sectors with Frank Milne appeared first on The Economics Detective.